Creating Master-Detail Cascading Lookup Column

Cascading lists are useful and easy to create using the Ultimate Forms Connected Lookup feature. When creating a master-detail cascading lookup column, it is important to keep track of the relationships between your lists. Cascading lists allow us to direct the users' selections by utilizing the backend relationships between lists.

A Master-Detail lookup column first presents a selection of possible values from the source list, filtered by the master column. For example, attached to a complete list of cities, the column will only show cities located in the country, which value was beforehand selected in the Country column. When the Country field selection is changed, the corresponding values are fetched using AJAX technology, not requiring page refreshes.

Instructions

In this example we will have three lists. There is a relationship between Product categories and Food products that we want to show in our form.

First, we need to create the parent list, Product categories. We can use the list’s Title column to populate the following categories: Dairy; Meat; Sweets; Beverages; Fruits and Vegetables.

Next, we’ll create the Food products list with various types of comestibles.

Since each record in our Food products list will belong to a category in our Product Category list, we need to create a lookup column in the Food products list.

After the lookup column is created, we’ll assign all of the foods to the appropriate category.

Finally, we need to create the list that will contain the form with the cascading columns. We will call it Food sales. All we need at this time is the default Title field.

Now, in the Food sales list, go to the Ultimate Forms Design screen. Scroll down to the Columns section and click Connected Lookup.

On the Connected Lookup screen, click the +Add new column link.

To establish the relationships properly, we need to start with the more general information and then drill down to the specific details, so we will start with adding a column for the categories. In the New column dialog, name your column Categories in the Title field.

In the List field, click into the field and select the Product categories list from the pop-up menu.

The Display column field specifies which column of the list will be shown. Click into the field and select Title from the pop-up list.

Set the Filter by parent lookup option to off since this is the parent list. Click Save to save your work.

The first lookup column is now visible on the Connected lookup page. Click the +Add new column link again.

We’ll now connect the Food products list. As in the previous connected lookup column, give this a title and select the appropriate list and title.

For this column, we need to set the Filter according to parent lookup option to On. This will allow us to select the parent list information. Set Parent lookup to the Categories column we previously created and set Lookup in source list to the Product categories list.

As an option, you can allow users to add new items in this column and assign them to categories.

You also have the options of filtering results by views and making information required.

Scroll to the bottom of the dialog and click Save when finished.

We can now go to the Food Sales list to test our set up. Add a new item, and select a category; once you do, only food items within that category will be displayed.

If you select a different category, the food items change to reflect that.

Summary

Connected Lookup columns can be used as a regular list column or as a site column. Site columns can be re-used across the site collection on the site where it was defined and all the subsites. They can be added to a list directly or added to a content type to be reused. Please note that both the master lookup column and the master-detail lookup column must be present in the same content type/list.

Last modified:
6/3/2020 7:57 PM

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